


Smoke and Mirrors

by HiLarpItsCat



Category: The Dresden Files - All Media Types
Genre: LARPing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-12-02 02:58:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11500347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiLarpItsCat/pseuds/HiLarpItsCat
Summary: Ugh. Parents.More recent backstory for Tilly.





	Smoke and Mirrors

Tilly was sitting at the bar by herself; it had been a slow night at Mac’s so far. Erasmus had been in earlier and shared a few drinks and stories with her, but had only stayed an hour. She didn’t want to go home yet. Not tonight.

Maybe she should take up smoking, she thought.

Come to think of it… she smelled smoke right now.

From behind her, she heard a man’s voice: “Join you for a drink, little miss?”

Tilly rolled her eyes. “Barking up the wrong tree, dude,” she said without turning around.

He gave a brief chuckle. “Not exactly. I think you’ll find that _I’m_ the tree…” he leaned onto the bar next to her and gave her a grin, “…and you’re the little apple who fell from it.”

Below a mop of salt-and-pepper curls, his eyes were red, and his teeth were stained with charcoal.

“Oh shit,” Tilly said.

“Hey there, daughter-of-mine. Buy you a drink?”

“No thanks, I can cover it myself,” she said, waving Mac over and ordering a beer.

“Clever,” he said, still grinning. To Mac: “I’ll have one of whatever she’s having.” He turned back to Tilly. “Let’s grab a booth and chat.”

Tilly shrugged and followed him, carrying both pint glasses.

“So,” he said, rubbing his palms together excitedly; they threw off small sparks.

“So,” Tilly echoed, keeping her voice neutral.

“Nice to meet you?” He prompted, then rubbed his chin. “Huh, I usually get a better reception than that.” He flashed what was, she grudgingly admitted, a fairly winning smile.

“You said _usually_ … I assume I have half-siblings, then.”

“Sure, they’re… around, if you want to meet them.” He waved a long-fingered hand vaguely in the air beside him, trailing tiny wisps of smoke.

“Why are you here?” Tilly asked.

“What a lovely spot,” he said, looking around the pub. “Do you come here often?”

“Why are you here?” she asked again. She probably looked skeptical, but she also knew that Fae weren’t the best at reading facial expressions.

“You may call me Cole, by the way,” he said. “I haven’t earned the title of Father yet and it would be so awfully rude of me to presume.”

“Why are you here?” Tilly asked a third time.

His smile froze for a moment. “Well then,” he hissed, sounding like steam escaping from a radiator. Then he relaxed slightly. “You’re drawing attention to yourself. Not just me, all of them are starting to notice.”

“Notice what?”

“You haven’t Chosen.”

“Well, it’s not up to you, is it?”

“We all thought you would have by now.” Cole reached a finger out and touched a lock of her hair. Tilly flinched back. “You came so close once…”

“I’m keeping my options open,” she snapped. “Do you do this with all your kids?”

He sighed, a little wistfully. “Alas, no. They’ve all Chosen, every one… and all mortal.” He shook his head. “Such a waste, but… then there’s you. This in-between life you have is fascinating, but it can’t last. Keeping your options open?” He laughed, sharply. “If you want a life of options and choices then just choose mortal and get it over with, if your ‘free will’ is that important to you… but otherwise? This world you see around you? It’s a puff of smoke compared to what’s really out there. You could go anywhere and see everything and you’d have centuries, even millennia, to experience it all. Why do you _wait_?”

“I’m waiting for the right offer,” she said. Her voice was shaking slightly. He talked with his hands as well as his voice… spoke intensely and answered his own questions… she did those things too. His facial features were too much like her own.

It was like looking into a fun-house mirror.

He tilted his head quizzically as he regarded her; Tilly tried not to notice that it tilted just a little too far to be human. “Clever,” he hissed. “But futile. You’re running out of fences to sit on, little girl, and one day you might not get to wait any longer.”

“What do you mean?”

“Things are changing… the balance between Summer and Winter? It’s shifting. Everyone’s going to have to pick a side eventually.”

“So you’re recruiting.”

His smile grew a little too wide. “Don’t think I haven’t considered nudging you in the right direction, daughter-of-mine. It would be so easy… waiting until you’re somewhere alone and then trapping you in flames. Little Changeling sparks wouldn’t be enough to control it, and mortal flesh burns so easily… all you’d have to do is make the right choice.” A high-pitched giggle escaped from behind his teeth.

Tilly shivered. _Never forget that they aren’t human,_ someone once told her, _for their thoughts and emotions are incomprehensible and quite possibly insane._ Cole composed himself and went on. “Oh, don’t worry, little wisp, I wouldn’t _want_ to do that. I couldn’t bear to have you so cross with me… besides, it’s so much more fun to watch you figure it out on your own.”

“Yeah, well, I guess you’ll have to wait and see.”

“I guess so,” he said, drawing lazy circles of smoke in the air around them, and sighed dreamily. “I would so love to have a Fae daughter… even just one… who Chose the same way I did.”

Tilly froze. “You were a Changeling.”

Cole gave her a wink but did not answer. He finished his pint and stood. “See you around, little one,” he said, and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. Tilly gave a small yelp and pressed a hand to her singed skin.

He was gone. Tilly went back to the bar and asked Mac for a cup of ice.

“Well, fuck,” she muttered to herself.


End file.
